Groovy Tuesday: Sheila E.’s “Romance 1600”

Every Tuesday, the Analog Kid blog goes back in time and features some of the best groovy R&B/soul songs from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Sometimes you’ll hear songs from individual artists or from a specific year, and other times you’ll get an entire full-length classic LP ripped directly from the Analog Kid’s vast vinyl vault. Warning: by R&B/soul, I also mean disco. I could go all Linda Clifford on your ass at any given moment, so just be ready!

Sheila E. is often lumped into the same category as other lovely Prince protégés such as Vanity, Apollonia, and Carmen Electra. Anyone who makes this assumption is woefully mistaken– simply put, Sheila E. is one bad-ass musician. See for yourself:

Can Neil Peart work a kick drum like that in high heels? I THINK NOT.

Sheila may be a monster musician, but even monsters need a little help now and then. No one can really say for sure how much Prince contributed to Romance 1600, her 1985 follow-up to her debut smash The Glamorous Life. Sheila is credited as the sole writer on seven of the album’s eight tracks, but Wikipedia will tell you that Prince wrote the whole thing himself. Wikipedia might be right, but then again Wikipedia also told me that U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard was a member of President Obama’s cabinet after his stellar performance at this year’s World Cup (he was the Secretary of Defense, naturally).

We can say for sure that Prince wrote and performed on “A Love Bizarre,” the album’s biggest hit. It reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it just might be my favorite non-Prince Prince track. The rest of Romance 1600 smokes as well, and the Analog Kid hopes you enjoy this fresh vinyl rip of an out-of-print classic!